A near-death experience has a 75-year-old man thanking police for saving his life Wednesday.

Lee Hieger took his 10-year-old granddaughter swimming at Sutton Place on May Avenue in July, when he suddenly experienced a heart attack.

“I don’t know whether I came closer to drowning or dying of a heart attack,” Hieger said. “(I) survived both of them.”

Hieger said he was 7 feet underwater for several minutes while his wife and neighbors worked to move him to safety.

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“The police were the first to get there, they were there within about a minute,” Hieger said.

Officers performed CPR on him until paramedics arrived.

“(The) thing that, you know, impressed me the most was an officer, after they had put me in the ambulance and took off, he offered to give my wife an escort to the hospital,” Hieger said.

Some of the officers tried to visit him at his home after the ordeal to check on him, but he had to stay in the hospital for three weeks, and he did not get the chance to meet them and thank them until Wednesday.